Making Things Bearable
by Spawn0fBellatrix
Summary: Audrey finds something secret of Seymour's that brings them just a little closer together. Pre-plot. Audrey/Seymour, sort of.


_AN: Hey, so I'm back and writing LSOH fics again! (Former account: SpawnofBellatrix. I forgot my account info, since it's pretty old. Welp.) This one was inspired by the OTPPrompts Tumblr, specifically this post_

 _Imagine your OTP as children, and person A gives person B a teddy bear. Years later, they're still friends, and person A is left alone at B's house for some reason. Deciding to search around B's room, they find the bear. Their reaction is up to you. Bonus: B notices how much the bear is in need of some serious patching up, and decides to sew it up themselves. (link:_ _post/130393811888/imagine-your-otp-as-children-and-person-a-gives)_

 _Hope you all enjoy! Please review, critique, tell me what you love and hate._

In retrospect, Seymour really should have gotten rid of the damn bear years ago, but he just couldn't bring himself to. Max had served loyally for over 20 years ( _has it really been that long?,_ he thought to himself) as a comforting reminder that sometimes people could be kind, even on Skid Row.

However, seeing Audrey perched on the foot of his bed, stitching up the seam of the bear's leg where it had started to detach, made him want to run away, puke, and burn Max (and himself), all at the same time.

She looked up from her project, smiling at her patient's owner. "Seymour," she asked with a knowing smile, "where'd ya get this bear?"

 _Of course Seymour'd been hit first in dodge ball; he inevitably always was. Sighing, he made his way over to sit in the loser's corner, where the Skid Row Home for Boy's high chain-link fence met the butcher next door's red brick wall. All the other boys, who bore some semblance of coordination, were still playing dodge ball, leaving poor little five-year-old Seymour few options except to run a twig against the chain-link or stare sadly at the little bits of grass trying in vain to grow between cracks in the sidewalk._

" _Hiya," he heard a voice call. He pivoted his head toward the fence, where he saw a little girl, perhaps his own age, with golden pigtails and a bright pink dress, a teddy bear dangling from her hand. This confused Seymour; no one on the outside of the fence ever talked to him; heck, most people_ inside _ignored him!_

" _Hi…" the little boy replied tentatively. He stood from the corner and approached the fence, where the girl stood._

" _Why ya sittin' over here all by yaself?" she asked; her voice squeaked when she spoke, and she had the slightest lisp._

" _I'm out," Seymour lamented, dejection clear on his bespeckled little face._

" _Oh. That stinks," the girl sympathized. "I'd play with ya, but my momma said I'm not s'posed to run in my dress." She gave an apologetic look._

" _That's okay. The fence woulda got in the way anyway," the boy pointed out._

" _Well we could play cop and robber, so it doesn't! Or," she pointed to the twig that Seymour still held in his hand, "You have a wand! We could be wizards! Wizards don't have to run," she claimed eagerly._

" _Okay!" Seymour exclaimed, grinning widely. The girl searched for only a moment before she found her own magic wand, but by then the older boys had begun, one by one, to get knocked out of the game, and with little else to do, they began their second favorite game: picking on Seymour._

" _Ooooooh, Krelborn's playing with a giiiiiiirl," taunted Johnny, the seven-year-old ringleader, while his friends made mocking kiss-noises behind him._

 _Seymour pouted. "Shut up, Johnny," he spat, hoping they'd leave him alone in front of his new playmate._

" _Why?" Johnny jeered, "Have fun playing fairies and princess, since you play ball like a girl anyway."_

" _Hey, you should be nicer to him!" The girl cried from her side of the fence._

 _Johnny approached the fence laughing, "Ha! Krelborn needs his girlfriend to fight for him!" His laughter stopped, though, when a tiny foot snuck through the chain-link and kicked him square in the shin with all its little might. It hurt more than he wanted to admit, and he backed away from the fence with a snarl. "I'll deal with you later, Krelborn," he threatened, leading his gang away._

 _Seymour's face turned bright red. "Thanks for that," he muttered._

 _The girl, it seemed, was pleased with herself. "You're welcome," she replied with her best manners, before grinning mischievously. "Mamma only said I couldn't run, but she didn't say I couldn't kick!"_

 _Seymour laughed then, a happy compatriot in her mischief. "How come he was bein' so mean to ya?"_

 _Seymour looked askance. "I don't have any friends," he grumbled, embarrassed._

 _The little girl looked at him with wide eyes. "I'm your friend," she confided with a gentle smile. He smiled contentedly back at her, surprised. "Max can be, too!" she giggled, holding up her bear._

" _Okay!" Seymour accepted enthusiastically. "You hafta stay out there though," he suddenly realized, his happiness faltering slightly._

 _The girl pursed her lips for a second in thought before darting away from the fence. She stepped just off the curb, in between two parked cars, and then turned to face Seymour, who looked on in confusion. Taking her bear into both her hands, she swung her arms up swiftly and released, sending the toy flying over the fence. Seymour scrambled to catch it, just barely grasping the bear before tumbling to the ground._

 _The girl looked on in triumph. "There!" she exclaimed. "Now Max is in there with ya!"_

 _Seymour gazed at the bare in shock. "Really?!" At her spirited nod, he blurted out, "Thank you! I've never had a toy before!" with excitement._

 _The girl was about to respond when a tall, equally blonde woman burst from the butcher shop toward her, crying out, "Audrey Mae, there you are!" She grabbed her daughter by the arm and pulled her back onto the sidewalk, scolding, "You can't go running off like that, and into the street!"_

 _In an instant, the girl was being dragged down the street as her mother lectured her, but she turned and waved goodbye just before disappearing out of Seymour's sight. Sighing, he clutched the bear tightly to his chest, happy to have made a new friend but sad to see her in trouble._

As far as Seymour had known, he never saw that girl again. Over time, the memory had faded, but Seymour's recollection today felt as vivid as though only a week had passed, rather than almost twenty-five years. Until this instant, he had totally forgotten his gift-giver's name, which he'd only heard when her mother chided her.

"Audrey Mae…" he whispered incredulously to himself, unwilling to believe the obvious connection. Finally looking his coworker in the eye, he had to ask: "Was it really?"

Audrey nodded with a giggle. He smiled back at her. "Can ya believe it?" she replied, tying off her thread and cutting the remainder from her needle.

"I saw him on ya desk down here when I was takin' down inventory the otha day, and I thought, _how bizarre would that be?_ But then I looked on the bottom of his foot and saw this: " She lifted the foot in question to reveal clumsy but legible pink stitching in the shape of the letters "AMF." "My mamma did that, so I'd find him if I eva lost him," she explained.

Seymour blushed hard, but he smiled shyly at her. "He was my only friend for a long time," he confessed quietly. "All the boys at the Home made fun 'a me, and then it was just me and Mr. Mushnik until you started working here."

Audrey rose from her seat and crossed to Seymour. "Well, ya got me now too," she told him, pressing the bear into his arms and her lips gently to his cheek, leaving a red smudge of lipstick. Pulling away, she smiled before turning to go up the stairs and back to their customer-void storefront.

Seymour had no idea what that meant, or if it even meant anything. But Audrey kissed him, however briefly, and his grin stretched widely across his face. "Thanks, old pal," he whispered to the bear, before setting him on his bed and following his coworker back to reality.


End file.
